Americans desperately need and want health-care reform. Our president laid out a clear path to achieving the will of ordinary Americans who live in the shadow of nonexistent or inadequate health insurance. As someone who is fortunate to have health insurance at a cost of $2,000 per month to my employer, I can see clearly that the current situation cannot and will not continue.
The problems arise from who is doing the paying because that determines the motivations driving the determination of cost. When the motivations are corporate profits, quarterly dividend payments and executive salaries, the perception of "what the market will bear" is skewed to the highest levels possible. That system is morally bankrupt and fiscally untenable.
Our government and our society must respond to the needs of the people. Reform with the freedom for individuals to choose a public option -- essentially allowing anyone to voluntarily enroll for Medicare -- is the best and most sane route. The worst route is to allow the interests of insurance company profiteers to restrict choice and turn a simple societal need into a bloated corporate welfare program. I am relying on the gravity of their public offices to bring the Max Baucuses and the Kent Conrads of our Senate to shake off the chains of the insurance company lobbyists and do what is right for America.
DAVE RAMSEY
Dormont
No business sense
The politicians running Pittsburgh have the city virtually bankrupt and unable to meet looming pension obligations. The politicians running Pennsylvania have the state virtually bankrupt and can't come even come up with a budget on schedule. The politicians running our country have the nation virtually bankrupt, with mind-boggling trillions of dollars of debt that they intend to pass on to future generations.
The reason for these facts is fairly obvious: The great majority of politicians, from local to national, have never run a business bigger than a lemonade stand, have no business sense, no understanding of economics. Yet now they want us to trust them to manage health care, which is not only about 20 percent of our economy, but something our very lives depend on. God help us if we let them get that power!
WILLIAM O'CONNOR
Murrysville
The working poor
Recently President Barack Obama spoke about the need for health-care reform. I believe everything he said, and the fact is we can't wait for this needed reform.
I have good health coverage because my husband gets it through work; at least I think it's good -- we'll find out when we need to make a claim. My sister, however, is one of the 47 million uninsured. She is employed full time as a night guard. She makes a little over minimum wage and has no benefits at work. Even if health care were an option, she wouldn't be able to afford it.
This is why the public option is so important to me. There needs to be something for the working poor. This shouldn't happen -- not in America.
CHARLENE GILL
New Castle
First things first
In response to the health-care issue: I think you first have to fix Medicare fraud, which is at approximately $42 billion in waste, before we start a national health-care program. Fix the medical malpractice suits, which encourage doctors to give many unnecessary tests, costing billions.
Police and clean these areas of health care first, then let's talk about a national health-care system.
ROBERT SALTZMAN
Hampton
Socialist editorial
The Sept. 15 editorial ("Up in Smoke: A Year On, the Indoor Air Act Is Choked by Loopholes") is standardized anti-smoker rhetoric that ignores critical thinking. What is unfair is the law itself, not the exceptions. Government socializing private business is reminiscent of the Soviet Union, which failed miserably.
If, as the editor claims, the law is unfair to bar owners who must compete for customers, repealing the ban is the best solution. Many employees are happy to be employed by ban-exempt places for reasons of their own. The infamous "level playing field" imposed by anti-smoker forces, is the game played by them, depriving all of us the freedom to choose.
The Greeks and the Romans used sports to take people's minds away from governmental corruption and it worked, eventually causing the demise of past republics. Subtle control over free people (in this case private property owners) in the "we will protect you" mantra leads to more control. Comparing removal of freedom to a "level playing field" confirms the wicked intent of those pushing the socialist agenda.
ROBERT GEHRMANN
Pennsylvania State Coordinator
Citizens Freedom Alliance/Smokers Club International
Crafton
Hurts the message
I am writing in response to the Sept. 13 article "Color & Controversy." The focus of the article was on the different forms of protesting that have become popular. It also focused on how they change the effectiveness of protesting.
While I believe that protesting is an important right not to be forgotten or discouraged, I find the creative ways certain groups use to be distracting. The issues the groups are trying to bring to the attention of the media and the public and communicate to the leaders of the world are lost in the shuffle when the protests become a joke. And certainly, protesting is no joke to the people who participate.
Even in the article itself, a professor from Notre Dame says the antics "undermine" the issues that the protesters wish to bring forward. And some of the outlandish acts seem to have no significant connection to the issue at hand. Take, for example, dressing up as clowns before the G-8 summit in 2007. Clowns don't really have anything to do with the G-8, but the sight of a clown was enough to gain media attention. And when protesting gets too out of control, violence can occur, as it did in Seattle in 1999.
Despite the importance of protesting, when creative ideas negate the effectiveness, the protesting becomes less of a cause and more of a circus.
MEGAN MILLER
McCandless
Table games tax
Regarding "Table Games on the Table" (Sept. 12): In regard to using table games to increase tax revenue to help with the budget, the Legislature should call the gaming industry's bluff.
David La Torre, spokesman for the Meadows, is ready to install the games immediately but the tax rate would have to be "a lot lower" than the proposed 21 percent of the gross revenue, he says. Why lower and not higher? Because the gaming industry wants more and more profit on their monopoly?
He claims the table games are "incredibly labor intensive" but omits the fact that the servers and dealers will be paid less than minimum wage and will derive most of their income from patrons' tips. I'm a betting man. I bet if the tax rate is 21 percent, the casinos will have table games immediately!
Legislators, do what is right for your constituents, not the gaming industry.
REGE McDONOUGH
Mt. Lebanon
A missing trait
Would you please ask all your feature writers to please ask all the readers, "Why has common sense disappeared, in America today?"
From moms and dads to our elected thieves.
DON KOENIG
Bethel Park
We must demand an end to rip-offs of the taxpayer
I was dismayed and appalled at learning it is unlikely that we taxpayers will ever recoup the $81 billion bailout we gave to GM and Chrysler.
A recent report issued by the Congressional Oversight Panel was exceedingly pessimistic as to the intent of the two auto manufacturers to repay their horrendous indebtedness. There are strong indications that our Congress' attitude is to chalk up the losses to an economic recovery bad investment and let everyone, including the exorbitantly high-paid executives, continue to enjoy their meritless bonuses coupled with enabling the enviable employee benefits packages to remain unaltered as a slap in the face to taxpayers. Have the inmates taken over the institution?
We are a country that has demonstrated the economic benefits of being engaged in a free enterprise form of capitalism. One successful example of this is the Ford Motor Co. With first-rate leadership and no government intervention, it is manifesting the essence of how to contribute positively to society on the strength of its own initiatives.
What we are allowing to prevail is a travesty. We need to get our government representatives to employ the clout of their respective offices to intervene and ensure that the taxpayers are not endlessly ripped off.
T.A. MANSMANN
Bethel Park
First Published: September 22, 2009, 4:00 a.m.
